Matt Warren

Using QR Codes Properly

Most people use QR codes as a way to print a link. But they can be so much more.

Overview

QR codes are like the UPC scannable barcodes we are familiar with except they store information in 2D (up-down and left-right). They usually store a URL or link.

The codes are designed to be quick and easy for mobile phone cameras to scan them – even if rotated or partially obscured.

This document contains QR Code best practices that apply for lots of use cases but are particularly useful for ecommerce businesses.

The Big Idea

💡 QR codes should use links that include context about where the QR code will be placed, and NOT where you want the link to go

You accomplish this with an updateable redirect link. Which provides 3 important benefits:

  1. You can change the destination of the link in the future.
  2. Shorter links result in smaller QR codes, which are physically smaller, and quicker to scan.
  3. trackability – knowledge of which codes people are scanning

Tip: Use a redirection tool that works with your existing web domain name. This is because the camera app will display the domain to hint at the destination before you click on it.

To be a bit more concrete. Lets say you sell a blue water bottle, the SKU is BWB200 and the QR code will be placed on the bottom permanently. you could create a link like :

https://example.com/qr/BWB200/BTM

We’ll get to where that goes a bit later. The important bit is that this link tells you the person scanned a qr code, on that particular SKU and it was the one on the bottom of the bottle.

Having a naming convention can help later if you need to do bulk updates to links or to sort and understand everything at a glance, while also being short.

If someone goes to this link – you know they are physically holding your product. You use a different QR for a billboard ad, or business card – even if they all go to your homepage.

How to Make QR Code Images

There is nothing particularly magic about making QR code images, you don’t need to purchase anything for it. There are countless free webpages that generate QR codes you can download without watermarks.

Here’s a few good options:

Using one of these tools, you can create the QR code by providing a URL (ex: https://example.com/qr/BWB200/BTM) and downloading the resulting image file.

From there, you can work with it in your graphic program of choice. (you can put logos in the middle and cover a small number of dots in some cases)

Use a CTA. Ask people to scan the code, and give an indication of what it does. A QR code on it’s own will rarely get scanned.

⚠️ Always test the QR code with your phone to make sure it continues to work as expected before publishing or committing it to be printed.

Use Redirects

So you’ve got a link that you want to use and redirect to the ultimate destination that the user should land. Lets figure out just what is possible here, and how to set it up.

Consider the QR code on the bottle example from earlier. The person is holding that bottle when they scan it, they may want cleaning instructions, or to check the warranty, or to buy another for a friend. Perhaps in the future, you’ll have a dedicated page that’s mobile friendly specifically for the most common customer actions in this moment. For now, lets just go to the PDP.

A redirect lets us get the printable QR well before the pages exist, or to change the pages in the future if it needs to be optimized.

Let’s say the product page is https://example.com/product/bottle

you can put that as the destination for the redirect and it’ll work, but you won’t know if people are scanning the QR to get to the page. It’ll show as an unhelpful “Direct” in all the analytics.

💡 Use UTMs on the redirect destination. It’ll help you see how often these QR codes get scanned from within Google Analyics, Shopify reports or other stats collecting tools.

What would be more helpful is to expand the destination with some of these UTMs like:

https://example.com/product/bottle?utm_source=bottle_bottom&utm_medium=qr

Now you’ll see in Google Analytics, under traffic aquisition, how many times that drives traffic, how much of that traffic creates sales and you can dig into many other factors – device types, demographics, bounce rates, etc.

Side Note: For links to Amazon, there’s a couple things to keep in mind which are detailed further down.

What are UTMs?

UTM is a convention for extra parameters on a link to track the effectiveness of marketing efforts. The common parameters are:

  • utm_source (e.g. newsletter, twitter, google)
  • utm_medium (e.g. email, social, cpc)
  • utm_campaign (e.g. fall2023, fb_campaign32)

If you haven’t spent time on UTMs it can be a worthwhile exercise to organize and develop standards for your business so that across all places things get grouped for easier analysis.

Use a tool like https://utmbuilder.net/ to generate URLs.

QR Codes with Shopify

  • Creating Shopify Redirects
    If you run your store on Shopify, it has redirects built in (no app required): https://admin.shopify.com/admin/redirects Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like for the previous example, notice that it starts from the ‘/’ and doesn’t include the full domain name part of the URL.
  • Once you save that redirect, if you’ve followed along all the steps you now have a QR code that redirects to the PDP. Yay! 🎉
    • Special Shopify Links to Know About Apply A Discount
      Link that auto-applies a discount code: use example.com/discount/CODE to go to the homepage of your site and have the discount already applied in the person’s cart.
    • Apply A Discount + Redirect to any page
      discount link that goes to any page on your site: example.com/discount/CODE?redirect=/collections/bottles
    • Straight to Checkout
      Link straight to checkout (buy button link) with item and (optional) discount code: example.com/cart/<variant ID>:<quantity>?discount=10off
      • Could be useful on a QR with a “re-order” CTA
      • Find these links using the “Create a checkout link” action on a product

QR Codes with WordPress / WooCommerce

QR Codes with Amazon

  • Creating Redirects to Amazon
    If you have shopify or wordpress (or another) service hosting your website, use that for redirects, and just put the full URL in as the target including https://amazon.com part. If you do not have a hosted website to use there’s two options:
    1. A paid service that hosts the redirects – bitly.com is an option, and has an integrated QR generator. But keep in mind that the codes will show bitly instead of your brand, and you have to keep paying or you can lose access to features, and possibly break existing QR codes.you link directly to Amazon pages, which runs the risk of pages moving and the QR going to a 404 page at some point in the future.

⚠️ Be aware of Amazon terms for directing customers who buy there to another web store.

  • Special Amazon Links
    • Brand Referral Bonus Links
      If you have a brand registered with Amazon, you have the ability to generate brand referral links which pay a commission to offset some of your Amazon sales fees. For all links, you should try to put them into Brand Referral Bonus, the savings can be very significant. Run the links you generate below 👇 into this to get credit for all the traffic you send to Amazon.
    • Store Insights Links
      You can link to your store with trackable URLs. This can be a great option because store pages can be treated like a landing page and have fewer distractions than on the product details page.
    • Review your purchase
      The page https://amazon.com/ryp is where customers can leave a review for their recent purchases.
    • Direct Add to cart, Search pages and other
      It’s possible and can be useful to link to searches for your products (Two step URL) or to link directly to a cart with products in it. Helium 10 has a free tool to help you make these links: https://www.helium10.com/tools/free/url-builder/

QR Code Use Cases

Quick Reorder a Consumable

Got a consumable product like a food item, water filter, cleaning supplies or stationary?

Putting a QR code on the product or the product packaging itself means that when someone scans that QR code, they are likely holding your product in their hand. Consider if a quick reorder is what could they be looking for.

You can go straight to the PDP, or even test automatically adding product to the cart.

Ask for a Review

Instructions for getting a review are difficult to write out. A QR can get straight to where the review can be given.

Insert cards can be a great way to ask for customer feedback. Just be sure to stay within Amazon guidelines.

QR Code on the Packaging

Putting a QR code on the product or the product packaging itself means that when someone scans that QR code, they are likely holding your product in their hand. What are they looking for? product information, a manual, perhaps how to order more.

Consider what they’re looking at and where that person might be when they scan the code.

If this is on the front of the outer packaging and the product may be placed in bricks and morter stores, then the person may be looking at it on the shelf, in which case, bringing up a page with product reviews and information is a strong move to help move that person to purchase.

OOH Advertising

Tracking out-of-home ads can be difficult, and QR codes are no perfect solution, but they do give an indication of engagement with an ad. They make billboards actionable CTAs that can drive immediate sales.

Print Advertising

Similar to OOH, print ads often mention web addresses, they sometimes use Discount codes to track the effectiveness of an ad. QR codes provide another way to measure engagement with print ads.

YouTube and Video Advertising

The content people watch on TV can be hard to action. If you watch videos from your phone you can easily get to the “links in the description”, but when watching from 7ft away on the TV a QR code can be more actionable than asking people to type in or search for a web address.

If you do try this, recall the Coinbase superbowl ad, where the QR was on the TV for enough time for people to get their phones out and scan it.

Networking

QR codes can be used to store a “vCard”. A digital business card that can directly add your contact information into someone else’s contacts list on their phone. With a single click they can get your phone, email, full name, company and other details.

It can be a good way to get your info into people’s phones, without typos or having to write it out. Add one to your business card.

Use one of the QR generators listed earlier, some of them know how to generate this format of QR Code.

Staying Organized

If you are following the suggestions here, you may find that you have A LOT of QR codes to build links for, to generate QR codes for and pass all these to designers for implementing into labels, stickers, packaging, or advertisements.

A shared document like a google sheet, notion page or something else that works for your team is a good place to keep everything and refer back to.

At some point in the future, you’ll be doing an SEO restructure of urls, changing platforms and break a bunch of redirects. You’ll want to have a list of all the QR codes that exist in the wild to double check they continue to work.

The Shopify and wordpress redirect features include the ability to upload spreadsheets which can make bulk changes much more manageable.

🎁 Advanced Bonus: if you need to create many tens or hundreds of QR codes, do it with automation. I have a Python script that generates QR codes from a spreadsheet available on GitHub https://github.com/mfwarren/AmazonScripts/tree/main/qr_codes

QR Code Best Practices

A QR code is a camera scannable link.

Use a short link that indicates where the code will be placed, not where it’s going.

Create the QR code with that short link.

Use a redirect to expand that short link into one that includes UTMs for analytics, referral codes for earning additional $, add discounts, and ultimately delivers the person to the destination.

Use QR codes, on the product, the packaging, on insert cards, business cards, and in adverstisements

Use a CTA next to the QR code

Final Call to Action

Know some QR tricks not mentioned here? Connect with me on Twitter: @Matt_Warren

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